Test your tablecloth pulling skills with The Tablecloth Hour

Last year Taito contributed a new game to the often quirky world of Japanese arcade games called Ultra Low Dining Table(scroll almost halfway down on the link for videos; it’s also pictured to the right in the photo above), where the object of the game was to pound on a small table controller until the game reached a point where you flipped the table up, attempting to destroy every breakable object on the screen as possible. Perhaps quirky is an understatement with that game but at least it’s a fresh idea. Now that idea has spurned another game dealing with what we can call table-based controls or maybe “tableized” controllers with The Tablecloth Hour, which was testing at the Taito Station in Shibuya, Japan this weekend.

The premise behind this looks simple enough as it’s based upon the idea of pulling a tablecloth from under a place setting. It’s one of those actions that will generally result in an expensive experiment for many people but perhaps with the Tablecloth Hour you’ll be able to practice enough with the virtual version of fast tablecloth pulling to become adept at the real thing (ok, that is doubtful). It’s very unlikely that this game will be seen outside of Japan, I can’t imagine how often the cloth to this will need replacing but at least this is another example of the kind of creative games that can be done, and done best despite their quirkiness, in arcades.